Bread of Life

This is for my dear friend Jon.

It has recently occurred to me that becoming a Christian is a lot like becoming a lump of raw dough. Accepting Christ is the final ingredient that sort of gels everything together and all the liquids and powders have meshed. You are now a squishy glob of dough.

You are then dumped out of the security of your mixing bowl onto a 'floured' surface. Great. Dusty ole flour. But the dusty flour is necessary to keep you from sticking. The Chef rolls you over, squishing you, mashing you, stretching you. Sometimes dough has to be punched (literally) and thrown around. Flopped back down onto the 'floured' surface. Over and over. Finally after the kneading is complete, you are ready to rise.

You are placed in a special place at just the right temperature, covered by a towel (God's hand) and allowed to just sit (or so it seems). While you are in your element, just "sitting" you realize you are growing. God will leave you here for just the right amount of time. He won't let you 'rise' too long. Trust me, one time I forgot about some homemade bread I was allowing to rise and when I came back it had grown completely out of the bowl and was spilling over onto the kitchen counter. God won't let us rise too much. We might become to big for our britches and get in His way. Too much "sitting" will leave us fat and useless. So it's off to the fire with ya.

Once the kneading and rising are complete, you are then placed in a fiery hot oven and cooked. (What heat are you in right now?) Not only that, you are placed inside some sort of pan that constricts your shape. When you were raw dough, your form was free. Now you have this boundary. You will be left in the fire just long enough to set. That way, when you are taken out of the pan, you will retain it's shape and the pan won't have to hold you together any more.

Now you are done. Oh wait, not yet. Now you will be cut, sliced, possibly torn apart, buttered, maybe toasted some more, maybe soaked in milk and dredged through egg and sugar and re-cooked. You might be frozen or allowed to dry out and turned into bread crumbs. You might be torn into tiny bits and fed to a duck.

Just remember this--you were created to bring nourishment. Bread sustains life. It is almost always present at parties and feasts. Countless children hold it as a prize possession that tenderly houses their PB&J. The world at large recognizes the value and delicacy of bread, although you will occasionally get a cashier that tosses your bread in the grocery sack under a gallon of milk. Just par for the course.

We are all in the process somewhere. Some of us are being tossed in the air and flipped over and over on a floured surface. Some are sitting, rising. Some are being baked, while others are being celebrated. And some of us are in the bottom of the grocery bag under a gallon of milk. Regardless, we are all here to nourish. God WILL use us in the right recipe at the right time, as long as we remember HE is the Chef and we are the dough. There's no hopping out of the mixing bowl or walking out of the oven. Each stage has a purpose that leads to a divine end.